One of the first contributions of the new Republican-dominated Arkansas Legislature apparently will be to open the doors of our churches to gun-toting worshippers. That is surely the ultimate oxymoron.

At a time when a national debate rages over gun control in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., tragedy, Arkansas’ leaders advocate abolishing one control as an answer.

The Senate Judiciary Committee last week unanimously passed Senate Bill 71, sponsored by Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, and it was scheduled for its third reading in the Senate on Monday. Some Democrats have said they think it’s a good bill, and even Gov. Mike Beebe has said he will likely sign it if it reaches his desk.

Where is the common sense among our leaders that resulted in similar bills, one also sponsored by King, dying in committee in 2009 and 2011? At that time some clergy and legislators spoke out against the legislation, saying that guns should not be allowed in a house of God and that doing so went against Christian teachings.

Indeed, have any of these people who seem to be hell-bent on passing the legislation asked themselves: What would Jesus do?

SB 71 is absurdly called the Church Protection Act of 2013, and any of those who support the bill will, sooner or later, have blood on their hands.

It’s a wrongheaded response to an unlikely problem. Some people imagine that because a crazed shooter could enter their church during a worship service, someone needs to be armed — just in case. And supporters of the legislation point out that some rural Arkansas churches have had break-ins.

My own church had a robbery last year. A man walked into a church dinner and ran off with the money being collected from those attending. If someone carrying a concealed gun had been there, would the robber have been shot? Should we shoot him over the theft of money we’d have given him if he had asked?

We have had shootings in churches across the country. One concealed carry advocacy site lists 18 such incidents between 1999 and 2010, none of them in Arkansas. However, a church member was murdered at a church in Wynne two years ago, though not during a service or event.

If we need armed guards in our churches, as we apparently do in our schools, they should be well-trained and thoroughly investigated. Otherwise, you’re really just facilitating a shooting.

Who’s going to determine whether each person carrying a gun actually has a concealed-carry permit? Will each carrier be required to sign in? And how will you know that others not permitted don’t bring a gun, too — you know, just in case a gunfight breaks out during “Amazing Grace.” Will each church need a metal detector at the door to separate the good guys from the bad?

We should also know by now that not every person who manages to obtain a concealed-carry permit is really level-headed and without anger issues. We’ve even had a case here in which a permitted carrier pulled a gun in a traffic dispute. Who’s to say that won’t happen if someone sits in the wrong pew?

King’s proposal is sadly lacking in details for implementation. It repeals a previous ban, leaving the decision up to each individual church, and declares an emergency, making it effective immediately if signed into law.

Louisiana, where there had been fatal church shootings, passed a guns-in-church law in 2010, but it has some restrictions. According to a press report, the head of a church must “announce verbally or in weekly newsletters or bulletins that there will be individuals armed on the property as members of the security force,” and those individuals must receive “eight hours of tactical training each year.”

King’s proposal has no such requirements. Your church won’t even have to tell you that it’s allowing some individuals to carry their guns.

If we’re going to do this, let’s at least require the church to post a sign at the door, specifying either “No Guns Allowed” or “Bring Your Own Weapon.” That way people will know before they enter an “Old West” sanctuary.

With the help of a National Rifle Association spokesman, the Senate Judiciary Committee defeated a proposed amendment that would have required a church allowing concealed-carry permit holders to have a liability insurance policy of at least $100,000. So you will enter these facilities at your own risk.

This Arkansas legislative push comes in spite of national polls that indicate strong support for tightening gun-control loopholes. A recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 76 percent of respondents oppose allowing concealed weapons in houses of worship and that only 20 percent favored.

There is ample evidence to show that the spate of massacres in this country isn’t going to be solved by either more gun controls or fewer. The shooters are almost invariably mentally ill, but our society failed to detect and-or do anything about their illness.

If our political leaders really want to protect our schools, churches and other public places from crazed gunmen, that’s where they need to focus their efforts. But then, it’s easier to demagogue the issue with bills like SB71.

Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by email at royo@suddenlink.net.

Now that I have had another read of the comments, I feel the most correct thing to do, in this particular instance, is to strike the wording in the number 16 list of prohibited places. What has really happened now is the newly passed legislation has left the churches in Arkansas on the prohibited list, with the provision that they must come up with a policy in order to allow carry in church, as well as whom. Slippery ground really, since the church never should have been on the list in the first place. Either they say/do nothing, which means concealed carry there is still illegal with the new legislation, or they specifically allow it in some form. Crazy times. I support the 2nd ammendment.

I guess that being in Church a gun free zone should be let free for a nut case to come in a shoot people at will because they cannot protect themselves. My pastor has often asked me to carry when I was there but told him I could not do so. I applaud this legistature for taking up church goers rights to protect themselves in church. I also applaud the founding fathers of this great nation that for saw and understood where our rights come from, not from government nor from liberal news media, but endowed by our creator.

Brother Roy, this is exactly the kind of simple-minded, air-brained legislation that happens when a bunch of new legislators take office. It is also short-sighted government over reaching, and intrusion into the private matters of a local organization. It is absolutely none of the states business what happens inside a local religious body as long as it is not sedition, or a crime against a person or property. Frankly, I would like to see it contested in the courts on a civil rights basis. When living in a cultural and economic wasteland, you realize why people perceive Arkansas as uneducated bumpkins that are still living in the 20th century. We find today that Arkansas is 46th in the nation for savings and economic preparedness. This is where the mentality of our leaders originates.

Guys, I'd like to believe you are both intelligent clear thinking men. What I think you might not have been able to grasp from this legislation is that it no way prohibits churches from prohibiting guns on premises. -- It does not make the churches allow guns. Get that? All it does is allow churches to decide what they want to do without government interference.

If you didn't catch that you clearly cannot think without some filter of ingrained ignorance or purposeful linguistic negligence.

Why is it so easy to enforce your views at the point of a gun? (By making law abiding citizen’s criminals who will go to jail for thinking differently than you do.)

Brother Law, you make my point, exactly. This is a useless piece of drivel for legislation, and a waste of the legislative body's time. It is totally ineffectual, other than to effect that an arrest cannot be made on the basis of carrying within a church, but it probably does cause the statute governing the right to carry and defend ones own premises apply similarly in the defense of the church premises. Wonder if you must be a 'member' of the church to ventilate an offender? And if you read the current state statute, all one must do is PERCEIVE that a felony assault is about to occur. It is entirely confusing, more than likely not thought out carefully, and leaves the church open for litigation if the church authorities were aware that an individual was carrying within the boundaries of the church.

So why in the world did this legislation simply not strike the number 16 wording from the list of prohibited places in the Arkansas code? Seems like that is much cleaner, but then again I do not really understand all the dealings that go on in the halls of our state congress. If the intent was to allow churches just like any other place that can decide their own policy on this to do just that, why leave them on the list and put in wording to allow them to choose? Maybe that is what it takes to get something passed.